The Biggest Winners (And Losers) in Pop Culture This Summer

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The Biggest Winners (And Losers) in Pop Culture This Summer

Jasin Boland/Warner Bros.

Somehow, the Labor Day weekend is over. And with its passing we are now staring down the end of summer. (Womp womp.) But overall, it's been pretty good! There was no real Song of Summer, but we heard some really good stuff! A bunch of dinosaurs and a post-apocalyptic hero with, like, eight lines gave the usual cape-clad blockbuster boys a run for their money. We even got some pretty interesting TV from some fairly unexpected places. All in all, not a bad few months.

However, not everything that came out after the earth began to thaw was a slam-dunk. For every great weekend at the multiplex, there was a total downer. What happened Fantastic Four?! (Don't answer that.) Same question to you, Adam Sandler. And outside the theater people started giving Apple Music a spin, leaving players like Spotify and Tidal out in the cold.

So, in the interest of putting a cherry on this fun/weird/action-packed summer, here are our picks for the biggest winners and losers of pop culture's favorite season.

WINNERS

Mad Max: Fury Road

In a summer when a lot of reboots and do-overs like Fantastic Four and Terminator Genisys had us collectively asking Why?!, George Miller's return to the world of Mad Max with Fury Road had us asking How?! How was it so beautiful? How was it so smart? How was it so unrelentingly gripping that we couldn’t look away no matter how many times we took ourselves back to the theater to see it again? But, most importantly, how did a trip back to a world Miller left three decades ago manage to yank summer dominance away from its spandex-clad superhero brethren? Honestly, we have no idea. But we're really fucking glad it did. Smart, dangerous, and even a little bit feminist, Mad Max: Fury Road dominated every conversation about movies for most of the summer, and will likely stay hot long after everything else has cooled down. —Angela Watercutter

Mr. Robot

It's a sad narrative for TV fans that summer is considered a graveyard for good programming, but that makes it a wide open field for underdog networks to step in and deliver surprising treasures (especially when heavies like True Detective fail super hard for HBO). Lifetime shocked anyone paying attention with how good UnReal turned out to be, and USA—the network that brings you Chrisley Knows Best along with every single rote crime procedural you can imagine—captured the viewing imagination fully with its hacking character drama/occasional thriller, Mr. Robot. The show’s creator, Sam Esmail, wrote his first big-ish project last year about a time-bendy romance starring Justin Long and Emmy Rossum. Around the same time, USA apparently had a psychotic break, because it agreed to fund a brand new writer's pitch about a socially disaffected and clinically troubled hacker in New York City that would co-star one actor best known for playing a Pharaoh in Night at the Museum (Rami Malek) and another who is frequently a punchline from the 1980s (Christian Slater). And then everything turned out to be awesome! Vulture devoted a whole post to how such a good show ended up on USA (ouch). WIRED wrote its own piece about how much Robot finally gets right about hacking culture, and Vox did a breakdown of the show's distinct visual aesthetic (rule of thirds, y'all!). In the absence of Walter White and Don Draper, audiences are desperately seeking a new man-of-skewed-principles to analyze and obsess about, and Malek's Elliot Alderson—this summer's King of the Small Screen—fits right into those shoes. —Jordan Crucchiola

Weirdo R&B

For every artist turning R&B on its head in recent years, there's a different reductive label for the music: hipster R&B, indie R&B, even PBR&B. We're not helping anything with our own nickname, but at least we're celebrating the thing that makes the subgenre different: the artist. And this summer was a never-ending parade of R&B artistry. Miguel's Wildheart was huge step in his evolution, channeling Prince's late-'70s energy into a sly 21st-century laptop Casanova; Jidenna went the other way, turning anachronistic dandyism into an anthem with "Classic Man." Meanwhile, FKA Twigs just said "fuck it" and drove her time machine to the Negative Zone for her EP M3LL155X. But that's not all. Chance the Rapper and his friends in The Social Experiment mashed jazz, rap, and soul together in the incredible Surf, and The Weeknd managed to do something you never saw coming: become a pop superstar without leaving his Bret Easton Ellis tales behind. So what if Frank Ocean teased us with an album that still hasn't come out? There are plenty of weird-ass fish in the sea, and they're making R&B as good as it's been since the Soulquarian days. —Peter Rubin

Nina Subin/Random House

Ta-Nehisi Coates

When Toni Morrison tells you a book is required reading, you read it. And after the events and national dialogue of the past year, Ta-Nehisi Coates' book tackling race in America through the format of a letter to his 14-year-old son isn't just a lyrical and compelling read—it's a really important one. Morrison points to Coates as a new generation's James Baldwin, and he seems poised to pick up that mantle. In ongoing conversations about the role of race in America, let's hope Coates' voice continues to be a clear and loud one. In the meantime, read Between the World and Me. And at 176 pages, go ahead and reread it. —Charley Locke

Amy Schumer

Do you think Amy Schumer knew it would be such a phenomenal smash when she named her debut feature Trainwreck? Was it a stab at detached irony? Eh, probably not. But it worked anyway. Coming off another fantastic season of Inside Amy Schumer that featured near-perfect bits of feminist comedy like "12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer" and "Last F**kable Day," Schumer doubled-down with the razor-sharp humor of Trainwreck. She ended the season the way everyone should: on a boat with Jennifer Lawrence. And they weren’t just there to pal around. As summer wound down, Lawrence revealed to the New York Times that she and Schumer have actually been working on a screenplay for a movie in which they’d both star as sisters. And when Lawrence told her new BFF that she’d told the Grey Lady about the script, the comedienne’s response to the confession was as cutting and funny as everything else she said this year: "I wrote, 'I just spilled the beans to The New York Times. Is that O.K.?'" Lawrence told the paper. "And Amy wrote back, 'That you're gay? Totally! It's exciting!'" —Angela Watercutter

UnReal

Full disclosure: Up until this June, I had never watched anything on Lifetime. But then came UnReal. A look at the production side of a Bachelor-esque romance reality show, its premise is outdone only by its pedigree: Co-creator Marti Noxon has of the best writing resumes in TV, cutting her teeth on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Glee, and even Mad Men. And thanks to a stellar cast led by forces of nature Constance Zimmer (who plays executive producer Quinn) and Shiri Appleby (star producer Rachel), the tale of manipulation and subterfuge is as scene-chewingly fun as it is smart. You thought Game of Thrones was deceitful? Varys and Littlefinger have nothing on Quinn and Rachel. —Peter Rubin

Colin Trevorrow is clearly a talented filmmaker. But he also might be the luckiest guy alive. After just one feature—the Sundance hit Safety Not Guaranteed—he was handed the keys to the Jurassic franchise. It was a pretty big bet on a pretty small director. But not only did Trevorrow not screw it up, he landed the current top-grossing US film of 2015. (It’s made nearly $644 million domestically this year, handily beating Avengers: Age of Ultron.) Not bad, right? It got better. Hot on the heels of his success, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn took to the stage at the D23 Expo in August and announced that Trevorrow would be the man helming Star Wars: Episode IX. One more franchise and he’ll have a hat trick! Hey, we hear Thor: Ragnarok still needs a helmer... —Angela Watercutter

Straight Outta Compton

By the time August rolled around, Universal had already long established its dominance of the summer box office: Furious 7, Jurassic World, and Pitch Perfect 2 saw to that. But what no one saw coming was Straight Outta Compton. The story of N.W.A's genesis and dissolution raked in an astonishing $60 million in its opening weekend and within three weeks became the highest-grossing music biopic of all time. The movie generated more than its share of controversy due to the way it glossed over (or outright excised) MC Ren and DJ Yella's contributions and Dr. Dre's physical abuse of women, but it satisfied hip-hop fans and proved not only that "black movies underperform" is an outdated canard, but so is the very concept of a "black movie." —Peter Rubin

Elizabeth Banks

To know her is to love her. Elizabeth Banks has been working in and around beloved projects for years now—a Lego Movie here, a 30 Rock there. But this summer, after some 15 years in the pop consciousness, she somehow managed to have the biggest season of her career. After producing and starring in the first Pitch Perfect, she decided to add "director" to her duties for May's Pitch Perfect 2, and—in the parlance of Fat Amy—crushed it. PP2 made some $285 million worldwide—more than double what the first installment brought in—and a third film was green-lit almost immediately. As soon as the hoopla over the return of the Bellas died down, Banks showed up to reprise her role as Lindsay in Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, the Netflix series extension of the cult classic film she appeared in way back in 2001. And even though summer is over, Banks' hot streak is not: She'll be appearing in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2 in November. Aca-believe it. —Angela Watercutter

The #SQUAD

More than any one specific person, no social force drove summer 2015 like the #SQUAD. It hit the pop culture lexicon with the impact of a 500-kiloton word bomb, like "selfie" and "yolo" and "swag" before it, and jettisoned a thousand think pieces into the landscape. The Atlantic, The New York Post, Slate, Grantland wrote articles that ranged from paranoid screeds to etymological examinations, and each of them imparted a comically hyperbolic personification of the #SQUAD. It wasn't just a group of people hanging out. It was a living organism breeding its own social norms and expectations, and this summer, all the models and pop stars and actors on the tip of The Moment's tongue belonged to one. Forget shipping. In 2015, if you haven't been jumped into a #SQUAD you are a sad island without any #GOALS. Even septuagenarian Patrick Stewart asked Taylor Swift if he and Ian McKellan could join her fabulous flock. If you search #squad on Instagram you’ll get over six million results. If you search #squadgoals you’ll have more than 500,000 to pictures to choose from, because what’s the point of a #SQUAD if its not collectively striving for something? It’s aspirational yet current. Its exclusivity is exciting, but its inclusiveness is empowering. It is who you are today, who you want to be tomorrow and isn't judging based on who you were yesterday. The #SQUAD was everything and nothing at the same time, the vessel and the reason. There may not have been a worthy summer jam, but fuck it. You could still dance with your #SQUAD. And if Carrie Brownstein has her way, this fall will be all about the #COVEN. —Jordan Crucchiola

David Simon

Deeply developed characters in a grim, racially divided blue-collar city? Yeah, we can see that coming from David Simon. And yeah, it's really good. After a stint in New Orleans with Treme, Simon returns to the bleak East Coast city politics he does so well. Show Me a Hero, based on the 1999 book by Lisa Belkin (who shares screenplay writing credits with Simon and Bill Zorzi), dramatizes the embattled desegregation of 1980s Yonkers through a plan for 200 low-income housing units in white, middle-class neighborhoods. As Simon's latest showcase of nuanced characters and mid-size city politics, the six-episode, six-hour HBO miniseries didn't disappoint. Fans of The Wire will recognize some familiar faces in Show Me a Hero—Michael Potts, Melanie Nichols-King, Clayton LeBouef, Clarke Peters—but it's Oscar Isaac who carries the show as 28-year-old Yonkers mayor and titular reluctant hero Nick Wasicsko. He's at the top of his game—and he has to be, he's playing on David Simon's court. —Charley Locke

Drake

At the time of this writing, only one album released in 2015 has gone platinum. And it's If You're Reading This It's Too Late, which Drake tossed off without prior announcement or seemingly too much effort. But what makes Drake stay winning isn't that the album is that good (it's not), or that he so mercilessly destroyed Meek Mill in their virtually one-sided battle in July (he didn't)—it's that nothing sticks to him. All the "Wheelchair Jimmy"s and Drake the Type memes in the world don't knock him off his pivot. This dude put out a song this summer that made the phone battery emoji famous! He may be corny a lot of the time, but the 6 God cares not what we puny mortals think. —Peter Rubin

LOSERS

Fantastic Four

When Fox released its first Fantastic Four movie 10 years ago, it was a misguided but endearing attempt to cut in on the burgeoning superhero genre. The reviews were bad, and as more and more super movies streamed out of the gates from Marvel Studios that were actually really good, it made those Ioan Gufford/Jessica Alba efforts seem abysmal by comparison. For all those reasons, and the fact that hot new director Josh Trank was attached to direct, the next Fantastic Four was supposed to be different. But then it tanked (Tranked?). The production was blighted by rumors of a toxic on-set environment created by Trank, who also, according to Kate Mara, instructed his cast not to read any of the comics for research. It was going to be a story of its own! All the super know-how Fox accumulated with its outstanding X-Men franchise went missing and the talented young cast dissolved in a movie that seemed to lack any joy or passion or thought-out third act whatsoever. And worst of all in Hollywoodland, no one went to see it, with Trank himself even disavowing the final product! If the first Fantastic incarnation was stupid bad, the second was offensively worse, generating more excitement for the eventual oral histories unpacking its failures then for the pre-greenlit sequel. The summer's biggest box office loser left a major studio with an even more major write-down, a director with a broken reputation, and the pretty Mara with a terrible Google image profile that will forever include That Reshoots Wig. Hey, Fox! Maybe it's finally time to give the rights back to Marvel. —Jordan Crucchiola

Nic Pizzolatto

It started with a laughable profile in The Hollywood Reporter that made the True Detective showrunner out to be more like James Dean, a rebel novelist against the establishment of prestige television. But the real problem was that the second season of his show, at one time imagined to be a Southern California story about water rights and the occult, turned out to be as confusingly dull as the first season was electric. Sure, there were highlights—Colin Farrell's Ray Velcoro chief among them, especially his Twin Peaks-inspired dream sequence—but the monologues that Matthew McConaughey spun into gold during the debut season were nowhere to be found. Pizzolatto famously clashed with first season director Cary Fukunaga, so much so that there's even a pompous director who looks like Fukunaga directing a mindless apocalypse action thriller in the second season. But with the pressure all on the guy creating and writing the show, it flopped. —K.M. McFarland

Spotify

Tidal and Spotify

Apple Music may have stumbled out of the gate back in June when it raised the hackles of music's new Sheriff in town, Taylor Swift, but it quickly turned that frown upside down and is now boasting 11 million subscribers. In two months it gained an audience half the size of Spotify's listening army and all but erased Jay Z's venture Tidal from the streaming conversation. Poor Tidal. In the same month that Apple Music launched it reportedly had fewer than 1 million paying customers and was losing its second CEO in a six-month span. There's certainly an audience out there for premium content at premium prices, but so far the company hasn't been able to shake the stigma of prioritizing artists over fans, and since no one's really talking about Tidal at all anymore that first impression is likely to be the lasting one. As for Spotify, it's got 20 million people paying for its services right now and is implementing new features to compete even harder with its adversary in Cupertino. The company's survival is likely ensured for the foreseeable future, but in the war of perception Apple Music—aka The Spotify Killer—is the cool new friend overshadowing all your old buddies, and its three month free trial had you jamming to its curated radio stations all summer long. Sorry Spotify and Tidal. It's time to play catch up. —Jordan Crucchiola

Tomorrowland

Did anything land with a louder thud this summer than Tomorrowland? Despite the star power of George Clooney, and the magical worldbuilding of the Disney hive-mind, writer/director Brad Bird’s some snowflakes-are-more-unique-than-others futuristic pic just couldn’t fly. Despite its beautiful big ideas, it was the kind of movie that shook a lot of shiny sci-fi keys at its audience but just never delivered on its storytelling promise—and audiences responded in kind. The movie got an underwhelming 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from critics (53 percent from audiences) and with a worldwide box office take of more than $208 million it might seem like it struck gold, but that only barely recouped the movie’s massive production budget. Even for the dreamers, Tomorrowland was a snooze. —Angela Watercutter

We Are Your Friends

When your film has the third-worst opening weekend on record, behind infamously terrible movies like The Oogieloves and Delgo, it's an inescapable sign that things may have gone wrong. Hollywood has attempted to capitalize on music trends for decades (Rock 'n' Roll High School, anyone?), but this Zac Efron-as-an-EDM-DJ gambit didn't just falter with critics, it barely managed to register in the public consciousness. Wes Bentley managed to turn in a compelling, tortured performance, but as for Efron, he's probably relieved that Neighbors 2 just started filming. —K.M. McFarland

Terminator Genisys

Sigh. Look, it’s not like Terminator Genisys was bad. It was just incredibly forgettable. Walking out of the theater felt like getting hit with a neuralyzer by the Men in Black. Hey, that’s OK, a lot of movies are forgettable. (We’ll still have fond memories of you, Emilia Clarke.) But as the rebirth of a beloved franchise, fans wanted more. Or the did in the US, at least. If there’s any silver lining to the Terminator Genisys disappointment, it’s that the movie cleaning up overseas. It made, for example, $82.8 million in just eight days in China—just a few million shy of the $89.4 million in made in nine weeks in North America. So there’s that. —Angela Watercutter

Adam Sandler

The Adam Sandler decline hit another layer of rock beneath the last this summer. Pixels was supposed to be an easy tee-ball home run, based on an award-winning short film and featuring the kind of real-life videogame nostalgia mix that recently signals a wildly successful film. But Pixels arrived feeling dreadfully lazy, and appropriately tanked at the box office, drawing in just about $71 million domestically. And to make matters worse, Sandler's Netflix contract hasn't gotten off to a smooth start either. The first production of his unprecedented deal with the streaming service, Ridiculous Six was mired in controversy after Native Americans walked off the set because of offensive jokes. Sandler waved away the dust-up as a mere misunderstanding, but his days of sleepwalking through films in cargo shorts may be numbered. —K.M. McFarland